Reprisal ac-5

by F. Paul Wilson

  "You got taken. You followed the routine and she slipped through. And didn't you tell me you even went so far as to call the woman's old pastor?"

  A mute nod from the priest.

  "Okay. So how were you to know that the two of you were talking about different people?"

  But Father Bill didn't seem to be listening. He started talking to the air.

  "My God, it's all my fault. If I'd done my job right, Danny wouldn't be all cut up like that. He'd still be in one piece back in St. F.'s."

  "Aw, don't start with that bullshit. It's her fault. Whoever took the real Sara's place is to blame. She's the one who took the knife to Danny."

  "But why? Why all the subterfuge, the elaborate plotting, and most likely the murder of the real Sara?"

  "We don't know that."

  True. They didn't know that. But Renny felt it in his gut: The real Sara was dead.

  "Why, dammit? Just to mutilate a small boy? It doesn't make sense."

  "I stopped expecting sense a long time ago."

  "And what about Herb?"

  "At this point I can go either way on Herb," Renny said with a shrug, trying not to remember what the man had looked like the last time he'd seen him. "But my gut instinct is that Herb was a victim too."

  The priest's eyes were bleak as he looked at Renny.

  "So then it's Sara—the bogus Sara—we're after."

  "Right. And we'll find her."

  "I'm not so sure about that," Father Bill said softly.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Before the priest could answer, a doctor walked into the lounge, one of the nameless, faceless white coats that had been trooping in and out of Danny's room for days.

  "Excuse me. Father Ryan? I want to discuss some procedures we'd like to do on the Gordon boy."

  Renny saw the priest's body tense, like an animal ready to spring.

  "Tests? More tests? What about his pain? All you do is tests but that child is still in agony in there! Don't come to me with more requests for tests until you've healed his wounds and stopped his pain!"

  "We've tried everything we know," the doctor said, "but nothing works. We need to test—"

  Father Bill took two quick steps toward the doctor and grabbed the lapels of his white coat.

  "Screw your tests!" His voice was edging toward a scream. "Stop his pain!"

  Renny leapt from his seat and pulled the priest off the doctor. He shooed the doctor out of the lounge and got Father Bill into a chair.

  "Cool it, Father. Just cool it, okay?"

  A nasty thought slithered through Renny's mind. In a crime with no witnesses, the first suspects should be the people closest to the victim. He remembered how everyone he'd interviewed at St. F.'s had commented on how attached Father Bill had been to little Danny. What if he'd been too attached? What if the thought of giving the kid up for adoption had been too much for him? What if—?

  Jesus! Knock it off Augustino! This is one of the good guys here. Save it for the street slime.

  "Why don't you go home," he told the priest. "You're cracking up from spending too much time in that hospital room."

  The priest looked away. "I can't leave him. And besides, it's the only place I know without a phone."

  Oh, yeah. Another sign that Father Bill might be cracking under the weight of all this craziness. He kept talking about these phone calls he was getting from Danny where the kid was screaming for help, begging him to come get him. A sure sign that—

  The priest jumped as the lounge phone began to ring.

  "That's him!" Father Bill said hoarsely, staring at the phone as if it were going to bite him.

  "Yeah? How can you tell?"

  "That's the way it rings when it's Danny."

  The phone did sound weird. One long, uninterrupted ring that kept going. But weird ring or not, Renny knew it wasn't Danny Gordon on the phone. He snatched it up.

  "Hello!"

  A child's voice, terrified, screaming.

  "Father, please come and get me! Pleeeeease! Father, Father, Father, I don't want to die. Please come and get me. Don't let him kill me. I don't want to dieT

  Renny felt his heart begin to thud in response to the anguish in that little voice. It made him want to run out the door and find him, help him, wherever he was.

  But he knew where he was. Danny was down the hall, in bed, hooked up to half a dozen tubes and monitors.

  "Is that you, lady?" he shouted into the phone. "This is Detective Sergeant Augustino, NYPD, and you just made the biggest mistake of your life!"

  The line was dead. He depressed the plunger and dialed the operator. After identifying himself he asked if she had just put the call through to extension 2579. She said no and checked with the other operators. No one could remember putting a call through to that extension all morning. He slammed the phone down.

  "She's somewhere in the hospital!" he said.

  "What?" The priest was back on his feet, his eyes wide.

  "If the call didn't come through the switchboard, it had to originate in-house. She's probably sitting in some corner playing her tape into the phone."

  "You mean it sounded like a tape to you?"

  "Come to think of it… no."

  Father Bill was suddenly running down the hall.

  "Danny! She's here to finish him off!"

  Renny followed him. He hated the thought of entering Danny's room, of hearing Danny's sound, his voiceless scream, like air escaping a punctured tire. Endlessly. It never stopped. The whole time you were in there it went on and on and on. He didn't know how Father Bill stood it. But he followed the priest into the room. He'd go anywhere, to hell itself to catch the bitch who'd done this to that kid…

  But Danny was just as they'd left him, twisting and writhing in openmouthed agony. Renny could bear only a moment or two in that room, then he had to flee it, leaving Father Bill alone at the bedside.

  Bill seated himself at the side of the bed, pulled a Rosary from his pocket, and began fingering the beads. But he didn't say the usual Our Fathers and Hail Marys. He couldn't find the words. His mind was saturated with Danny's ungodly torment.

  Ungodly. A fitting adjective. Where was God when Bill needed Him? When Danny needed Him? Where had He been Christmas Eve? On vacation?

  Or is He out there at all?

  Such a question would have been unthinkable a few days ago. But Bill had run out of excuses.

  And he knew them all. All the gentle explanations of why bad things happen to good people, and why even the most devout, most sincere, most selfless prayers often go unanswered. He knew how events often seemed to conspire to work against the best people, against the best things they tried to achieve. But that didn't mean there was a Divine Hand at work, moving people around, shaping events, checking off names of those who could go on living and those whose time was up.

  As Bill saw it, death, disease, rape, murder, accidents, famine, plague—they all had earthly causes, and therefore had earthly solutions. As God's creatures we were expected to find those solutions. That was why He equipped us with hands, hearts, and minds.

  Neither God nor the mythical Satan were the cause of our woes; if the culprits weren't ourselves or other people, they were time, circumstance, or nature.

  Or so Bill had thought.

  How did he explain what had happened—what was still happening—to Danny?

  From everything Bill knew, from everything he had seen during the past few days, the answer was None Of The Above.

  None of the above.

  Sure, blame whoever had posed as Sara for taking a knife to Danny. She started it all. But what about the rest of it? The endless pain, the wounds that refused to heal, the unresponsiveness to anesthesia, the transfusions—almost fifty liters had been poured into Danny since his arrival—that seemed to be sucked down some black hole never to be seen again—what of them? Danny wasn't eating; his kidneys weren't functioning, so he was putting out no urine; his heart was beating but there wa
s no blood for it to pump. It was impossible for him to be alive—every doctor who'd seen him had uttered those same words at one time or another.

  Impossible… but here he was.

  And what of Herb Lorn? A hollow man—not just spiritually, but without internal organs or a nervous system—who had dissolved when Bill punched a hole in his chest.

  Good God!… the hole in his chest… the cold… the stench… the slime…

  As much as his faith resisted it, as much as his mind saw it as a surrender of the intellect, he could not escape the feeling, the overwhelming belief that something supernatural was at work here.

  Something supernatural… and evil.

  And Danny was the target.

  Why Danny? What had this child ever done to deserve this living hell? He was an innocent, and he was being put through unimaginable torture by a force beyond nature. Something dark and powerful had taken hold of him and was thumbing its nose at the laws of God and man and nature, keeping Danny beyond the reach of humanity's most advanced medical science.

  And deep in his gut Bill knew that the torture would go on as long as Danny lived.

  Where there's life, there's hope.

  Bill had lived by that neat little aphorism for the four and a half decades of his life. He'd believed it.

  But no more. Poor little Danny's case broke that rule. As long as he remained alive, there was no hope of relief for Danny. His life would go on—

  No. Not life. Existence was a better term. For what Danny had now was not life. His existence would go on as it had since Christmas Eve—unhealed wounds, unremitting pain, with no hope of relief.

  At least not from anything in this world.

  Bill pocketed the Rosary and said a silent prayer of his own.

  Help him, Lord. Something beyond the natural is causing his torment and so only something else beyond the natural can save him. That's You, Lord. We can bounce back from any blow Your world hands us, but we are helpless against the otherworldly. That's why Danny needs You to step in on his behalf. Not for

  my sake—put his wounds on me, if that will do it. Just don't let him suffer anymore. If there's something that can be done that's not being done, let me know. Tell me and I'll do it. No matter what it is, I'll do it. Please.

  Danny's rasping screams ceased and he opened his eyes.

  Bill froze and watched as Danny's eyes stared about the room, searching, finally stopping when they found Bill. He grabbed the boy's hand and squeezed.

  "Danny?" Bill said. "Danny, are you there? Can you hear me?"

  Danny's lips moved.

  "What?" Bill said, leaning closer. "What is it?"

  The lips moved again. A whisper escaped.

  Bill moved closer still. The breath from the parched tunnel of Danny's throat was sour as Bill put his ear almost against the dry lips.

  "What, Danny? Say it again."

  "Bury me… in holy ground… It won't stop… till you bury me…"

  NINETEEN

  How long could a week be?

  Bill Ryan pondered the question as he swung into one of Down-state's parking lots. As the guard passed him through, a couple of rag-wrapped derelicts hurried toward his car, shouting and waving. They didn't appear to be the typical window-washing winos; they almost seemed to have been waiting for him. Bill drove on. No time today to figure out what they wanted.

  He left the station wagon in one of the handicapped spots and entered the hospital through one of the employee entrances.

  "Evening, Father," said the smiling uniformed black woman inside the door. "Happy New Year."

  Bill could not bring himself to say those words. No way was the year that started tomorrow going to be a happy one.

  "Same to you, Gloria."

  Only a week here and already he was something of a fixture. The security people knew him, he was on a first-name basis with most of the nurses on all three shifts on Danny's floor, and the walks he took to stretch his legs between vigils at Danny's bedside had familiarized him with most of the building in which Pediatrics was located. All in one week. One endless week. Thank God Father Cullen had been available to fill in for him at St. F.'s.

  But if the seven days between Christmas and New Year's had been an eternity for Bill Ryan, he knew it must have been longer by an unholy factor for poor Danny.

  Bury me… in holy ground… It won't stop… till you bury me…

  Danny's eyes had closed after those words and he hadn't spoken since. But those words, those words had tormented Bill for days, echoing through his mind every waking minute. He had asked for guidance, but the advice he'd received was unthinkable.

  Or so it had seemed at first.

  Things had changed since then. Bill was convinced now that modern medicine offered no hope. The doctors were helpless against whatever force had Danny in its grip. And during the span of Danny's hospital stay that helplessness had wrought a slow but unmistakable change in those doctors. Bill had seen their attitude mutate from deep concern for a savagely brutalized child to bafflement, and from bafflement to cold clinical fascination with a scientific oddity. Somewhere along the line Danny had stopped being a patient and become an experimental subject.

  Bill thought he could understand them. The doctors were in the business of curing illness, treating disease, healing wounds, providing answers. But they could not heal Danny, could not help him in the slightest, could provide no answers to Bill's questions. Danny's condition confounded their skills and training, spat on their professional pride. And so the doctors pulled back and switched gears. If they could not help Danny, they would learn from him.

  Bill could see it in their flat eyes when he spoke to them: Danny the boy had become Danny the thing. They wanted to experiment on Danny. Sure, they called their plans "testing" and "exploratory surgery," but their real aim was to get inside him and find out what was going on in there.

  So far, Bill had been able to stand in their way. But all that would change the day after tomorrow. The head nurse on days had told him that by midmorning on January 2 the hospital would have a court order making Danny a ward of the state and giving it legal guardianship over Danny. The hospital then would have carte blanche; the doctors could experiment on him to their hearts' delight. He'd be the subject of clinical conferences; they'd bring in all the residents and show them The Boy Who Should Be Dead. And when Danny finally died—When would that be? Five years? Ten? Fifty?—what would they do? Bill envisioned Danny pickled in ajar where generations of fledgling doctors could view his still-unhealed wounds. Or maybe his remains would be put on display like the Elephant Man's.

  Uh-uh. Not if Bill had anything to say about it.

  Word of the court order had spurred him to a decision. The unthinkable became the inevitable.

  The nurses at the charge desk on Peds waved hello as Bill passed. He returned the greeting and stopped.

  "Where is everybody?"

  "Light shift tonight," said Phyllis, the head nurse on three-to-eleven. "Wait'll you see eleven-to-seven—that'll be a real skeleton. Everyone wants to party."

  Bill was glad to hear that. He'd expected it, but it was good to have it confirmed.

  "I can understand that. It's been tough around here."

  Her face lost some of its holiday cheer. "How about you? We're all getting together at Murphy's after we get off. If you want to come over—"

  "Thanks, no. I'll stay here."

  He would have stopped for a longer chat but didn't dare. The phone calls were coming more frequently now. More than a few minutes within ten feet of a phone seemed to set off that unearthly ring… and the terrified voice… Danny's voice.

  He continued down the hall and found Nick sitting outside Danny's door reading one of his scientific journals. He looked up at Bill's approach.

  "Anything?" Bill said.

  He knew the answer but he asked anyway.

  "Nothing," Nick said.

  "Thanks for spelling me, Nick."

  He squinted up at Bil
l. "You were supposed to go home and sleep. Did you?"

  "Tried." He hoped he could get away with the lie if he limited it to a monosyllable.

  "You look more exhausted than before you left."

  "I'm not sleeping well." That was no lie.

  "Maybe you should get a sleeping pill or something, Bill. You're going to come unglued if you keep this up much longer."

  I'm unraveling even as we speak.

  "I'll be all right."

  "I'm not so sure about that."

  "I am. Now you get going. I'll take it from here."

  Nick stood up and looked closely at Bill.

  "Something's going on that you're not telling me."

  Bill forced a laugh. "You're getting paranoid. Go to the physics department party tonight and have a good time." He stuck out his hand. "Happy New Year, Nick."

  Nick shook his hand but didn't let go.

  "This has been one hell of a year for you, Bill," he said softly. "First your parents, then this thing with Danny. But you've gotta figure things can't get worse. Next year has to be better. Keep that in mind tonight."

  Bill's tightening throat choked off anything he might have said. He threw his arms around Nick and held on to him, fighting down the sobs that pressed up through his chest. He wanted to let it all out, wanted to cry out his misery and fear and crushing loneliness on the younger man's shoulder. But he couldn't do that. That luxury was not for him. He was the priest. People were supposed to cry on his shoulder.

  Get a grip!

  He backed off and looked at Nick for what might be the last time. They'd been through a lot together. He'd practically raised Nick. He saw that the younger man's eyes were moist. Did he know?

  "Happy New Year, kid. I'm proud of you."

  "And I'm proud of you, Father Bill. Next year will be better. Believe it."

  Bill only nodded. He didn't dare try to voice belief in that lie.

  He watched Nick disappear down the hall, then he turned toward Danny's door. He hesitated as he always did, as anyone would before stepping across the threshold of hell, and sent up a final prayer.